


inside the outsider (on my own again)

by ivermectin



Series: gossip girl metafic [1]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007), Inside - Dan Humphrey
Genre: Alcohol, Banter, Dan Humphrey's Sexuality Crisis, Dan Humphrey's Writing, F/M, Gen, M/M, Pining, dylan regards sabrina with a lot of disdain, i hate how writing dylan/clair banter is somehow easier than writing dan/blair banter, i'm writing fanfiction of fanfiction!, this is SUCH a niche, this is so meta, why am I like this!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28605825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Clair’s laughing, her laughter like crystal windchimes, filling the room with radiance, beautiful because it’s a rarity.
Relationships: Chuck Bass/Blair Waldorf (implied), Clair Carlyle/Charlie Trout, Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf (implied), Dylan Hunter/Clair Carlyle, Dylan Hunter/Derek (sort of but Dylan is in denial about it)
Series: gossip girl metafic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096118
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	inside the outsider (on my own again)

**Author's Note:**

> My internal monologue gave me a HUGE moment of "I'm so much like Dan Humphrey" so I decided to dwell in it. They should've hired me to write more of Dan's work. 
> 
> Title from "The Outsider" by Marina and the Diamonds, aka, my personal anthem, and therefore, 100% on the Dan Humphrey soundtrack.

It doesn’t matter how many friends I have, I’ll always be lonely. You can get in, but you can’t leave yourself behind. The problem is me. The problem has always been me, despite how much I tried to ignore it.

I exhale shakily, the room I’m in too small and cramped for me to really be here. My mouth still tastes like cranberry vodka, I still have Derek’s laughter echoing hollowly in my ears, like he’s sunshine and I’m a vampire. Everything hurts – I’m in love with Clair, and Derek keeps looking at me, and everything hurts.

She’s smaller than I am, but fiercer, harsh in a way that I can’t really comprehend, aggressive in a way that makes the pit of my chest hurt. “Dylan,” she says, dripping in contempt, like a hand dipped into a jug of honey flipping me off. Her voice is soft and warm and I feel oddly ill at ease. “Must you stand here in this way? You’re ruining my view.”

I’m ruining everything. “I know how you feel,” I tell her, because I do, I always do. “You’re going back to Charlie. You always do. The two of you are like two halves of a whole, and I’m just here, alone, always alone. Give me a pity kiss?”

“Urgh,” Clair groans, looking two seconds away from ripping her hair out. “You’re grotesque, Hunter. Leave me alone.”

I do, eventually. I wander the corridors of the fancy house carefully, on guard, doing my best to make no noise. The last thing I want is for Derek to appear, Derek with his cheerleader-bright smile and inability to hold an ounce of malice. From an isolated corner, I watch Clair make her rounds, her heels trotting against the ground with rhythmic noises not unlike the sound of pebbles being thrown against a window in the dead of night.

I want her to step on me.

I’m approached by Sabrina, the look in her eyes clearly non-sober. She giggles, takes my arm, pulls me over to the drinks table, and I let her, because it’s easier being with her than with anyone else. At least she doesn’t expect me to be a good person. That’s what comes from having an ex who is as popular as you are unpopular. What does she have that I don’t? I wonder. The answer’s obvious, of course; old money family privilege. And, well, she’s hot.

“You get away with everything, and make it seem so easy,” I tell Sabrina.

She pouts, exaggeratedly childish. “Come on, Dylan, don’t be like that!” She’s joyful, giggling. I think about how easily things come to her, how she doesn’t know this feeling of despair that I’ve been waking up with each day, every day.

“How should I be, then?” I ask her.

Clair’s talking to someone on the other side of the room, aggressive and firm, the look on her face clearly non-impressed. I wonder, feeling out of place for the millionth time, why I made my way in here. Why I choose to stay. And then I see her shooting Derek and Frankie a little smile – Frankie, my ambitious little sister who’d kill me if it’d get her where she wants to be, not that she needs to. Things come easily to Frankie, too. The secret must be to be a blonde, beautiful woman. Three things I’m not. Things that both Frankie and Sabrina are.

Nothing matters. I see Derek looking at me, wonder if he thinks I’m hot enough for a quick fumble in an empty room, or behind coat check. I make myself look away – he isn’t my friend. He’s Frankie’s friend. In the Hunter family household, we had to divide everything pretty neatly into halves. Frankie had staked her claim on Derek when I’d staked mine on Sabrina.

Do I regret it? Sabrina’s fun, a breath of fresh air, dizzy laughter and illicit drugs and an inability to take a single thing seriously. She’s heroin to me, but I can’t get enough. The world is brighter when I’m with her, different colours gleaming bright, but I don’t like what I see when I look at the two of us. We look just like our parents; well, like her mother and my father. Her, the millionaire with an edge of steel, me, the sugar baby who used to make art before deciding to be a kept man.

I was in love with Sabrina once – who wasn’t? She was all glimmer and glow, it was practically a rite of passage, falling in love with Sabrina.

We didn’t fit, though. I wasn’t good enough arm candy, I wouldn’t be pretty enough on someone like Sabrina’s arm.

She’s filling a flute with sparkling wine now, handing it to me. Substance abuse is her answer to everything. I wish my world was that simple, that easy, that manageable. I can’t blink away my problems the way she can.

Charlie walks in, now, a disinterested look on his face. He’s sleek and laughably charismatic, almost a parody of a predatory billionaire. I say almost because it’s not really funny; because I’ve seen the damage he’s done, and still can’t really look away. How can I blame Clair for going to him, when I’d embrace him just as warmly if he opened his arms to me?

“Char,” she says, warm, a completely artificial smile lighting up her movie star face. “You came!”

“Couldn’t let you down now, could I?” he says, as if he hasn’t been letting her down from the very beginning of their stupid relationship.

Frankie sees the look on my face even from across the room, and my phone buzzes with a message barely a minute later. I pop it open, look at it.

“He’s a creep,” her message says. “Have u forgotten?”

“I remember,” I message back. “He’s also a billionaire.”

Clair’s laughing, her laughter like crystal windchimes, filling the room with radiance, beautiful because it’s a rarity.

“Fuck this,” I murmur, look at Sabrina, her perfect make-up and blank expression and the way she’s holding a glass of champagne like she was born a veteran drinker. “S, get me drunk.”

She laughs, cheerful, bubbly, no weight to it. “Your wish is my command, Dyl,” she says. I hate it when she calls me Dyl. Still, nobody can mix a drink quite like her. She pours one out, and I swallow. And I wait for the next one, and the next one.

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost more fun than writing GG fanfic, I'm so sorry. I might do more of these, because why not.


End file.
